Numb

You sit there numb with an indifference that came from nowhere. Sometimes it just creeps up on you with no warning, one minute you’re fine and the next- bang- suddenly you’re not. The world took over today and gave you too much to handle, too many emotions at once and at some point your body said it was enough and shut it all off. The world could end in front of your very eyes and you’d just be like “okay”. You’d just sit there and watch, indifferent. But something always happens that draws you back to reality, a thought, a friend, a conversation. Sometimes you’ll go back and forth for a while, people don’t notice because you’ve learn to put on a mask, “I’m just spacing out, I’m fine.”. It’s not that you’re sad- because there’s nothing left, there isn’t any capacity to feel sad, there just isn’t room. You’re mentally out of office. You want to be there and be present, you even lend the occasional smile so that people think nothing about it. And it might not feel like this all the time but when it does, you just feel it’ll never end. You’ll be stuck this way for ever, and maybe you can remember a time when this was the normal. You shut everything our so that you didn’t have to feel the bad, but that came with not feeling the good. You try to let yourself feel everything now but you still have to put in work, your default is still to hide from emotions. And sometimes it makes you feel sick to your stomach like you’re going to throw up but there isn’t even anything inside of you. You just sit there and stew in the sick feeling of absolutely nothing. 

And the worst part is you’re alone in it. And as you slowly slip back into feeling, sadness is always first. You aren’t sure if you’re even glad to feel something because for an hour or so, it’s all you can feel. You think of all the things that are wrong with the world and all the things you hate. You come to realizations that you’d rather not know and never think about. You sink deep into the depression that you will always give more love than you will receive. That’s just who you are. It’s just part of you being alive. And you feel like you’ve gotten the short end of the stick in this life, I guess if someone gets the long end someone somewhere has the get the short one. So you can’t really feel like it’s unfair. Some people will receive more love than they will ever give. And as you think about it, like really think, you aren’t sure which actually sounds worse. It’s not that you don’t love to love, it’s the feeling that no one loves you that weighs heavy. That when you aren’t okay, no one asks, or cares. Even when you want someone so desperately to ask so you can break down in their arms and tell them everything going on in your head. But it’s not their fault, because when they ask you say you’re fine. You don’t resent them you resent yourself, because at the end of the day you aren’t letting love in, you actively push it away. Why? I don’t know. Maybe its just too much for your little heart to handle, maybe you start to wonder if it’s just easier to feel sad and resentful. It’s easier to ruin things for yourself than have someone break your heart. So you push people away, even when they think you’re an open book. 

Yet it’s the worst to have someone ask if you’re okay, or say they are always there to talk. Because you know you can’t burden them with this, you just can’t. You know they are sincere, and that they care, and when they ask you feel like crying because you hate what comes out of your mouth. It’s just a natural reflex, to not burden someone with the existence of everything going on in your mind. It’s already so much for you alone to handle so how can you expect someone else to handle it as well? How can you ask them to do that for you? And you want to, more than anything else, to unburden yourself. But you never will, because you’ll never let yourself. And at the end of the day this is all on you, it sucks and it hurts but its your own fault. Just how you’re built I guess.

But i’ll give you a little tip. It always helps to write about it.

Then the next feeling that comes back in gratefulness, and it’s so overwhelming that you might cry. Because you realize how lucky you are to be alive and live in this beautiful world. You get to experience profound sadness and happiness, you get to love and get loved, you get to see, touch, hear, smell, and feel all the world has to offer. You have friends and family that you love to love and love to love you. And at the end of the day, really, you love being alive.